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Jesus 



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Men about Him 




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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



JESUS 



AND THE 



MEN ABOUT HIM 



BY 



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CHARLES F. DOLE 



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BOSTON 
Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street 

1888 



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COPYRIGHT, 

BY GEORGE H. ELLIS, 

1888. 







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To the men and women everywhere who hope for a 
church more real, more broad, more noble than any that 
now exists, this little book is offered, with the purpose of 
setting forth under the guise of familiar types of character 
the eternal principles which make religion precious to the 
heart of man. 



PREFACE. 



There is constant need of object lessons and 
parables, even for the most thoughtful minds, in 
enforcing moral truths. From whatever point of 
view we consider the figures in the New Testament 
story, they furnish most interesting types to describe 
precisely such men as we see to-day. Whatever, 
also, any one thinks of certain dogmatic or historical 
questions about Jesus, there is practically no name 
or word so clear or that carries such wealth of mean- 
ing as when we tell men of the Christ life and the 
Christ ideal. The characters presented in the follow- 
ing pages are here used purely for this practical or 
ideal purpose, as so many pictures or object lessons, 
to make truth the more simple and beautiful. The 
author, indeed, has ceased to be very deeply interested 
in questions of mere historical criticism. Larger and 
more important subjects demand the thought of the 
world. Men need to know that a beneficent God 
manifests himself in human life now no less than 
when Jesus walked in Galilee. Men need to have 
preached to them what Paul used to say, — that "as 
many as are led by the Spirit of God are sons of 
God." Men's faithlessness is not concerning the 



6 PREFACE 

past or about matters which may never be proved. 
Their most fatal want of faith touches the present. 
It is whether this world is so truly God's world that 
it is safe and only safe to do business, to treat neigh- 
bors, and to manage the State by the Golden Rule. 
Men wait to see the real and ever new miracles of 
faith, hope, and love. Show men these perfectly 
practicable miracles, already worked in certain divine 
lives, worked afresh in myriads of lives, and doubt 
and fear shall flee from the earth. The author pro- 
foundly believes in this kind of miracle or manifes- 
tation of God. He would be very glad if this little 
book might help any one else thus to believe ; 
namely, that this world, here and now, is God's world, 
in which it is therefore well for the man who follows 
wherever Love bids. The author's thanks are espe- 
cially due to his friend, Mr. George S. Merriam of 
Springfield, the author of " A Living Faith," who 
revised the manuscript, and encouraged him to offer 
it to the public. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. John the Baptist, the Ascetic, ..... 9 

II. NlCODEMUS, THE PHARISEE, 24 

III. Nathanael, the Pure in Heart, .... 38 

IV. Peter and John the Disciples, 52 

v. Jesus the Master, ... 68 



I. 



JOHN THE BAPTIST, THE ASCETIC. 

JERUSALEM stands on hills considerably more 
than two thousand feet above the level of the 
Mediterranean. The valley of the Dead Sea lies 
fourteen hundred feet below the Mediterranean. 
From the gate of Jerusalem to the valley, in fifteen 
miles, you descend half the height of Mt. Wash- 
ington. Here, between the gardens and vineyards 
of Jerusalem and the deep, gloomy valley, was 
the wilderness of Judea, with bare limestone rocks 
and caves and haunts of robbers, a forenoon's 
walk out of the city. Among the valleys of this 
rough district were occasional little oases, where, 
about a spring or mountain stream, palm-trees 
grew. The fertile spots in the valleys w r ere the 
home of communities or brotherhoods of pious 
men, called Essenes. There were, perhaps, never 
more than four thousand of them in the whole 
country, some of whom lived in the towns. But 



10 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

their singular example carried a weight of influ- 
ence beyond their numbers. In a time of wars, 
when every man was a fighter, they would not be 
soldiers, or even manufacture arms and weapons. 
When human slavery was generally practised, they 
would have no slaves. In a land of vineyards, 
they would drink no wine. In entering the order, 
one promised "that he would honor God, practise 
righteousness toward men, do harm to no man, 
either of his own accord or at the command of 
others ; that he would always hate the wicked and 
assist the righteous ; that he would show fidelity 
to all men, especially to those in authority ; also, 
to love the truth and expose liars, to keep his 
hands and his conscience pure from unlawful 
gains." Keeping these rules, restraining bodily 
passions and appetites, bathing their bodies in 
cold water, devoting a portion of each day, be- 
sides hard work, to prayers, psalms, and hymns, 
partaking of their noon and evening meal to- 
gether, as a sort of communion service, they be- 
lieved that the spirit of man was purified and 
brought close to the mystery of the divine light, 
that visions and prophetic foresight of things to 
come might be looked for, or that the art of heal- 
ing the sick could be learned. 



\ 



JOHN THE BAPTIST II 

It was in this wilderness of Judea that the re- 
markable person appeared whom the world knows 
under the name of "John the Baptist," or, better, 
"the Baptizer." We are able to distinguish but 
the bare outline of a heroic figure, — " the voice 
of one crying in the desert.' ' We know hardly 
anything of the details of his life. If his father 
was a priest, John was not the stuff that priests 
were made of. The precise ceremonial of out- 
ward things, the slaughter of sheep and oxen, the 
looking after the tithes and the offerings, the noisy 
feasting multitudes, the gorgeous temple, crowded 
with curiosity seekers, with booths and tables in 
the great spaces where men bought and sold and 
quarrelled, the endless routine, doing things as 
they had always been done, keeping the old relig- 
ious customs intact which did not make people 
either holy or happy, — this life of a priest must 
have revolted many an earnest soul. You may 
suppose John some day to have met a kinsman 
from one of the Essenes' villages. "Come with 
us," the older man says to the younger. " You 
were not meant by God for a priest, to superin- 
tend the butchery of cattle, to wring the tithes 
from the poor. This town life is a sham. Come 
with us, then, and try our simple life, — pure air, 



12 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

clear running water, the fruit of the earth, honey 
from the bees, with the company of good men, with 
worship and the intercourse with the Almighty." 
John was the man to hear such kind of appeal. 
At any rate, he went to live in the desert where 
the Essenes were. He doubtless went in and out 
of their villages, knew their manner of life, and 
practised their rigid morals. 

Why did not John stay with the Essenes and 
become one of them ? The Essenes were pure 
and harmless people, but they had no mission to 
be helpers and saviors. On the contrary, they 
feared to endanger their own purity by mixing 
with men and going into crowds. You may liken 
them to the early Puritans who came to this coun- 
try. They did not want the wicked world to fol- 
low them here. They wanted to keep pure by 
themselves. Their mission was merely to live. 
They had their own souls to save. They were not 
here to help others to live ; and tho they were 
humane, strict, and devout, and tho they loved 
one another within the brotherhood, they had no 
kindling and missionary love for mankind. 

Now, no eager, passionate, large nature could 
have been content to stay with the Essenes. 
These Essenes' communities had existed for gen- 



JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 3 

erations, — virtuous, serene, religious, — but the 
world did not seem to be growing any better for 
them. All that they did was to keep things as 
they were, being as conservative as the priests in 
the temple. No reformation came from them. 
On the contrary, they carried off into the desert 
the very men needed in towns and cities to build 
up a more virtuous and religious town life. Sup- 
pose John saw this : it was obvious that there was 
no room for many people to become Essenes, 
even if that life had been able to satisfy ever 
one. Besides, the circumstances of the times 
brought pressing need of more than the Essenes 
were doing. 

John's age was not only the most memorable 
in history, but, what is rare, men suspected that 
it was memorable. It was memorable compared 
with anything that had gone before, for its riches, 
splendor and luxury, the bustle and din of wide 
commerce. The boy John had watched the mer- 
chants' caravans climbing the hills. He had 
looked on at the building of palaces and castles. 
He had most likely seen the great race-course at 
Jericho, where heathen games were played. He 
had been shocked at the new theatre within the 
holy city. He had wondered at the massive mar- 



14 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

ble buildings of the temple. He had heard as a 
boy of the great doings and the unlimited ex- 
penses of the Herods, who had girdled the land 
with forts, and built new cities with foreign names, 
and filled them with foreign people. 

The times were memorable, too, for vice and 
oppression. The terrible Herod the Great had 
died, perhaps in the year in which John was born. 
The tales of his grinding taxes, of the murder of 
his own sons, of men and women spirited away 
from their homes to his palaces and dungeons, 
were in every one's mouth. No one knew where 
his spies and informers were not. The new brood 
of Herods had come, if possible, smaller and 
meaner. Over all stood the dreaded power of 
Rome. Even in the temple halls the eagles of 
Rome had been suspended. Roman legions were 
seen from time to time marching up to Jerusalem 
or across the land to guard the borders of the 
empire against the Parthians. Unscrupulous Ro- 
man governors made themselves rich, and rich 
provinces poor. Altogether, it seemed as if the 
world grew worse. Vices and foreign customs 
spread : it seemed as if people had never suffered 
more unbearable evils. 

Along with all this, there was a wonderful ex- 



JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 5 

pectation of coming change. It was not in Judea 
alone. Men are said to have talked of it in Egypt 
and at Rome. The present age was hurrying on, 
men said, to its close. This vague sense of com- 
ing change, this prevalent discontent and popular 
unhappiness, predisposed men to religion. All 
manner of superstitions were credited. There 
seems to have been a revival of what we to-day 
call Spiritualism, — a readiness to believe in appa- 
ritions and the manifestations of the supernatural. 
In Rome there was a strange interest in occult 
things and Oriental religions. Palestine was full 
of people supposed to be possessed with demons. 
Men both feared spirits and were prepared to see 
them in the dusk of the night, as in the rumor 
after the crucifixion of Jesus that many spirits of 
the dead appeared to people in the city. Alto- 
gether, there was a strange sensitiveness, uneasi- 
ness, and restlessness of the popular mind, ill at 
ease with the world as it was, in hope and fear of 
what might soon be,— the fated end of the world 
or the golden age and the kingdom of God. 
There had been growing among the Hebrews for 
centuries a prophetic hope, like what the slaves 
at the South are said to have had. "Some 
time yet," true men had said, " the eternal laws 



l6 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

will vindicate themselves " ; as we say to-day 
even more surely when we add, " That which 
ought to be must be." 

In the midst of these anxieties, rumors, antici- 
pations, dread, the word went up to the capital 
that a strange man was just out of the city in 
the wilderness, preaching the kingdom of God. 
People did not know who he was. They described 
him by his dress and appearance, — his leathern 
girdle and camel's hair shirt, with the face and 
clothing of a hermit, whose meagre fare was what- 
ever came to hand, honey or locusts. People 
went in crowds to see him. We should have gone 
if we had been in Jerusalem. 

John's word was perfectly simple, — " The king- 
dom of God is at hand." What possessed him to 
believe so ? Little did he reck of the centuries 
of blood that have come and gone, from his time 
till now. Nevertheless, he said what was true. 
A new faith, a new spirit, a new and higher order 
of men were about to appear. John only dimly 
apprehended what he meant when he said, " Lo, 
the kingdom of God," as the heart of youth in all 
ages but vaguely knows what it looks forward to. 

What sort of sermons did John preach ? They 
were what we call almost strictly moral sermons. 



JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 7 

There were soldiers on the march who came to 
hear him. He did not tell them to stop being 
soldiers, as the Essenes would have said, but to 
stop their pillage and be content with their pay. 
He did not tell men to leave their homes and live 
in the desert as he did, but, staying where they 
were, to share their food and their extra garments 
with those who had none. He did not tell the 
publicans, as you would have supposed, to give 
up collecting taxes for Herod, but he bade them 
to stop extorting more than was due. He broke 
out, however, in indignation against the money- 
loving citizens of Jerusalem, the priests and Phar- 
isees, the men of good families, and called them 
"the breed of vipers." It was because he had na 
confidence in their sincerity. But he did not bia 
them to forsake all and follow him, as Jesus 
bade certain men to do : he only said, " Repent, 
and show that you have repented by what you 
do." There was a motive of fear behind this 
preaching. The new kingdom of God would 
make short work of the sinners. It was as tho 
the just king were expected to come suddenly to 
assume his throne. He would banish and de- 
stroy the wicked people out of the land. No one 
then thought of any other way of disposing of 



1 8 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

them. Bad men, hearing such preaching, trem- 
bled to think what would happen to them if they 
were caught in their sins. Altogether, it was 
healthy preaching, tho without any fine spiritual 
uplift. It was adapted to a sensual and supersti- 
tious people, like the sermons of certain noted 
revivalists, who make bad, dishonest, greedy peo- 
ple thoroughly frightened. There need be no fear 
that such people will be frightened too much. 

The only form or ceremony which John pre- 
scribed or used was baptism. The people were 
accustomed to frequent ceremonial washings. 
The Essenes appeared to have baptized them- 
selves religiously every day. John was simpler. 
He said, almost in so many words, Why baptize 
yourselves over and over ? Be baptized once for 
all. Be clean, and then stop doing the things that 
make you unclean. If John had used any words 
or formula of baptism, it would have been such a 
formula as this: "I baptize you in token of re- 
nouncing your sins, and of the kingdom of God." 
Here at the Jordan Jesus came to take this 
baptism. He must have been one of those pow- 
erfully moved by the preaching of John. He 
most likely found his disciples among those who 
had listened to John. Everywhere, people were 



JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 9 

set to thinking and reading the old scriptures. 
There was a lifting of the moral standards. 
When Jesus should begin to preach, people would 
be eager to hear more. 

John's preaching, however, left a great blank. 
After you had repented of your sins, what then ? 
After you had given away your surplus of food 
and your spare cloak, there would be a reaction. 
The kingdom of God had not yet come. You 
merely waited till it should appear. Meantime, 
life was hard as before ; meantime, temptations 
abounded to do as others did. It was not evi- 
dently God's world yet. How could you be con- 
tent before God's world should come, while it 
still seemed mostly the devil's world? 

John's own character and example illustrated 
the difficulty. He did not even come into the 
abodes of men himself, but they had to go out 
to him. He dressed like a fugitive ; he lived an 
unnatural life. Men admired him, but few could 
imitate such a life. It was forbidding to most 
men. Besides, tho strict, noble, and fearless, John 
lacks warmth and breadth of nature. He seems 
a man who expects God, not a man who has 
found God. It is not God's world yet that he 
lives in, but he waits for God's world to come. 



20 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

" There is a gospel/' he says, but he is not able 
to tell you what it is. This does not constitute 
a gospel. Men will soon be tired of hearing it. 
It will keep John's stern face to the front, but it 
makes no sunshine in his face. This is the char- 
acter of the ascetic temperament always. The 
ascetics tell you how you can contrive to get an 
exceptional vision of God. They have their cere- 
monial or their austere manner of life, which, if 
you will enter upon, will possibly let an occa- 
sional sight of God into your soul. But God does 
not habitually belong in their world. God's light 
does not naturally shine upon them. You must 
go out of the world to find God. The real king- 
dom of God has not yet come ; but you may 
make shift as you can, while you wait for it. As 
for common people who live ordinary lives and 
do nothing exceptional, there is no immediate 
gospel for them in this world. Their gospel is 
yet to come. 

It is some faint survival of this ascetic idea 
that we still see in the thought that a church is 
holy ground, apart from the world at large, which 
does not yet belong to God. In church you may 
find God exceptionally, as you do not find him 
elsewhere. It is the same faint survival of the 



JOHN THE BAPTIST 21 

old asceticism that preserves Lent. Here is a 
little period when you go out of the world and 
retire to the desert to hear John preach the doc- 
trine of repentance. You fast and live excep- 
tionally, and you may catch sight of God, who 
does not yet belong in the whole horizon of your 
life. The kingdom of God still waits. Whereas 
the only true gospel that fills a man's soul is that 
of one who can say: " Lo ! the kingdom of God 
is here. It is within you. This life is God's. 
Now are ye the sons of God. Live then here and 
every day, not in Lent alone, not in the desert, 
but in every place, as the child of God." The 
ascetic John did not see that. The ascetic spirit 
never sees it. Therefore, the reformation of John 
could not live, much less create a religion. 

John's end is very pathetic. Close to one of 
the pools on the Jordan, where John was wont to 
baptize, they say, rose a palace of the mean and 
low-lived Herod, John's opposite in character, 
station, and method of life. He had put away 
his wife, the daughter of a king, to take the wife 
of his brother. John called sin by its shortest 
name. Word was brought the king that this 
intrepid prophet dared to denounce him in the 
presence of the populace, with whom already he 



22 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

was sufficiently unpopular. The king swooped 
down from his fortress, and bore John away to 
the frontier castle of Machaerus bevond the Dead 
Sea. Rumor was that even Herod did not dare 
at first to put John to death, but let his disciples 
come and go to visit him in prison. It was from 
here that he sent men to learn of Jesus, "Art 
thou he that should come ? " But the wicked 
woman could not forgive John for attacking her. 
Every one remembers the story of the revel in 
the castle, the graceful dancing girl, and Herod's 
insane promise, and the executioner despatched 
to John's solitary cell. Where now was the com- 
ing kingdom of God that this faithful man had 
proclaimed ? Where now was the righteous God 
who ruled the earth ? Did the prophet despair, 
or doubt the fact of righteousness ? Did his 
faith die at last, as the light of this world was 
cut off ? No : that was never the manner of 
the prophets. They were in the hands of God. 
Should the soldier despair of his cause, because 
his turn came to die ? No : the Almighty reigned. 
The kingdom which had not come would yet come 
to the longing eyes of men. 

It is the fashion nowadays to laugh at the folly 
of the ascetic life. Let those who laugh at it be 



JOHN THE BAPTIST 23 

sure that they have something nobler. Who now 
cares for Herod, whom Galilee looked up to and 
feared ? The man who tried to live for himself 
did the world nothing but harm, whereas the man 
who lived for God still lives in his pure influ- 
ence over every soul of Christendom. John's life, 
which seemed to fail, succeeded. He won a place 
among the great names of history. He bore a 
part in bringing in the reign of justice and peace 
among men. He serves God yet as a pure and 
brave memory in the souls of men. 



II. 



NICODEMUS, THE PHARISEE. 

" I ^HE story is that Jesus had come up to Jeru- 
-*• salem to the Passover feast. In some poor 
and cheap part of the city, such as the lower class 
of pilgrims frequented, in a little, bare, upper 
chamber, you may think of him as receiving oc- 
casional guests. Here occurs the perfectly dra- 
matic picture of an interview between the peasant 
rabbi from Galilee and Nicodemus, a member 
of the Jewish Sanhedrim, or senate of seventy. 
The Jewish senator, leaving his spacious house, 
his face muffled, with perhaps a single slave in 
attendance, threading the dark, narrow streets, 
the Passover moon filtering its light from above 
into the crevices of the city, knocks at last at the 
humble house, and inquires in low tones for a 
certain Jesus lodging there. He is shown up into 
the low room, possibly crowded already with 
Jesus' poor countrymen and disciples. There 



XICODEMUS 25 

this Pharisee of rank stands in his fine robes and 
broad phylacteries, with inquisitive, intellectual 
face, to study the strange new prophet, whose 
truth-loving eyes in turn penetrate his visitor and 
read his character. A cheap lamp, such as they 
furnish in lodging-houses, burns dimly as these 
two representative men talk together into the 
night; and the disciples, tired of hearing, fall 
asleep, stretched on the floor. So much for the 
picture. 

The Pharisees, to whom Nicodemus belonged, 
were the religious leaders of the time, as their 
name probably suggests. They were the Puritans 
among the Hebrews. They aimed to maintain 
and teach the holy law. They even went beyond 
the law, holding that there was a considerable 
body of teaching that had come down by tradi- 
tion from Moses. This traditional law partly ex- 
plained and partly re-enforced the written laws. 
You may roughly liken it to the English common 
law, which grows out of and depends upon the 
rulings of the courts. So the Pharisees counted 
as sacred whatever they had inherited from an 
older time, till they had accumulated a mass of 
rules touching every part of their lives, — about 
food and drink, about marriage, about the Sab- 



26 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

bath and what could or could not be done upon 
it, about the tithing of anise and pepper-corns, 
about washings and the purification of dishes. 

The Pharisees also taught a strict and benevo- 
lent morality : " Let thine house stand open in 
the streets, and let the poor be the children of 
thy house." " Speak little, do much, and receive 
all men with a friendly countenance." " Judge 
every man according to the scale of justice." 
"Judge not thy neighbor, till thou standest in his 
place." " Count thyself with the oppressed and 
not with the oppressors." " Listen to reviling 
words, and answer not again." " Do all from the 
love of God." And, summing up the law, " Do 
nothing to thy neighbor which is hateful to thy- 
self." The Pharisees were strenuous believers 
in the doctrines of future rewards and punish- 
ments, and of the immortality of the soul, being 
opposed to the materialistic tendency of the 
times, and of the richer party of Sadducees. 

The Pharisees were not men who professed 
the law, but were unwilling or afraid to do what 
the law bade. On the contrary, they were pa- 
triots and martyrs. When, not long after Jesus' 
death, an attempt was made to put up a heathen 
image in the temple, thousands of people threw 



NICODEMUS 27 

themselves before the governor, and cried, "We 
are willing to die." The war that led to the 
destruction of Jerusalem was essentially a relig- 
ious war, which the Jews might have escaped if 
they had not been willing to die for what they 
held to be right. Such was the characteristic tem- 
per of the Pharisees, who constituted and guided 
public opinion for three hundred years. Not 
very numerous, forming an exclusive society of 
almost six thousand men, to which, however, the 
poorest Hebrew citizen might have access by 
fulfilling its strict conditions, the Pharisees were 
everywhere looked up to. They numbered among 
themselves, if not the most wealth, the best 
families in the land. In the synagogues of the 
country towns you would have seen their devout 
women among the most regular attendants and 
trustworthy supporters. The chief teachers were 
Pharisees, such as the renowned Hillel, whom 
Jesus may have seen when he came up as a boy 
to the temple, and his famous grandson, Gamaliel, 
Paul's teacher, perhaps the greatest man of Jesus' 
contemporaries. Paul himself was of a Pharisee 
family. Jesus was undoubtedly educated by 
Pharisee teachings in the synagogue at Nazareth. 
Nicodemus is an excellent specimen of his 



28 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

order. The common fashion of belittling his 
character is not warranted by the story, which 
makes him appear a rather superior man. How 
many of the upper class, deacons of rich churches 
with reputations to be talked about, or doctors of 
divinity, graduates of the university, can we 
count, who would go out of their way to look up 
an unlearned and humble teacher? How many 
well-to-do people are we sure of, who would rec- 
ognize Jesus if he were to appear to-day ? But 
Nicodemus skulked to Jesus' lodging under cover 
of night, some one says. How many, we ask, 
would have ventured to go at all, while as yet 
the rest of his very respectable party looked upon 
Jesus with extreme suspicion, when he was not 
an authorized teacher, when evil rumors came 
that he broke the laws and disregarded the Sab- 
bath and consorted with low people ? The story 
later on gives two further very creditable glimpses 
of Nicodemus. One is in the presence of the 
full Sanhedrim. They were excitedly discussing 
the dangerous and radical tendencies of Jesus' 
life and teachings. They honestly thought that 
Jesus was imperilling existing institutions. They 
had sent men to arrest him, who, being im- 
pressed with his teaching and the hold that he 



NICODEMUS 29 

had upon the people, returned without him. Then 
Nicodemus is said to have risen to demand justice 
for Jesus, reminding his angry associates that 
their law condemned no man without a hearing. 
Now, not one man out of ten has either the self- 
possession or the courage to stand thus alone 
against the crowd, not of another class, but the 
best men of his own class. The example of the 
American Congress, or any political convention, 
witnesses to this. 

Once more, after the crucifixion, when most of 
the chosen disciples had run away, Nicodemus 
appears as one of the few who brought ointments, 
a hundred pounds' weight, — a very generous and 
costly gift. He came himself, the story goes : 
other rich men would have been content, if they 
did anything, to send their servants. Of course, 
such a man never voted for the crucifixion. Per- 
haps he would not be present where it seemed 
useless to raise his voice against the mad ma- 
jority. 

We have said enough to show that Nicodemus's 
character, if not of the highest type, was unusually 
high. We take him to represent nearly the best 
moral material that you see anywhere. His was 
a candid and truth-loving mind, willing to see 



30 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

both sides of a question, — not a common thing 
in this world. He was not blindly prejudiced by 
the traditions of his order. As men go, he was 
remarkably appreciative, — a man of ideals, in- 
terested in the loftiest subjects, eager for relig- 
ious illumination from any genuine source. You 
would have trusted Nicodemus as a fair judge 
and an honorable citizen. You would never have 
appealed in vain for the poor, for the support of 
the temple, for a subscription to help the Jews in 
Rome to build their new synagogue. We should 
be proud to have the like of Nicodemus, so ear- 
nest and cultured, come to live in our street, and 
glad to hear that so reputable and religious a 
man had taken seats in our church. We should 
like to have all the men in a Christian church as 
honest, trustworthy, conscientious, and benevo- 
lent as this Pharisee is represented to have been. 
Nicodemus stands as the representative of the 
best that the Pharisees could produce. Why was 
it not enough ? Give us a world of men as con- 
scientious, earnest, and religious-minded as Nico- 
demus, — why would not this be a good enough 
world for any one ? Level men up to Nicodemus's 
standard, and what is the use trying in this life to 
level men any higher ? Wherein, then, do we find 



NICODEMUS 3r 

Nicodemus unsatisfactory to our moral sense ? 
" You must be born again/' or from above, says 
Jesus, as tho he had said, " You have not begun 
yet to live." What is this lack in Nicodemus, that 
when we met him on the street, upon the level of 
common men, we had not felt, but which in the 
presence of Jesus we vaguely recognize ? Nico- 
demus's lack was precisely what Jesus intimated 
He had plenty of moral and spiritual capacity. 
He wanted moral and spiritual life. It is as 
when you see a fine log of oak. The log is 
splendid material for warmth and heat, but it 
needs the kindling touch of the fire. This is 
what Nicodemus did not possess. He neither 
blazed himself, nor was it in him to make any one 
else blaze. The man of the Pharisee type is 
cold and cautious, even in his charitable duties. 
You cannot make a fire with a single log or 
coal, tho of the best. It will not ignite. You 
must put logs and coals together. So with men. 
There is a certain close contact of man with his 
brother man that we call " the sense of human- 
ity." Men as individuals will not ignite. You 
must bring them into a certain kind of sympa- 
thetic relation together. Nicodemus stood out- 
side of this new relation of brotherly humanity. 



32 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

It is possible to give alms to the poor without 
touching the hands of the poor, like the prince 
who tosses coins to the crowd from his carriage. 
It is possible to do public service in such a spirit, 
as tho you were only serving yourself, without 
feeling the popular pulse. We send such men to 
our legislatures and to Congress, who perform 
their public service with no sense of a common 
humanity thrilling them and commanding alle- 
giance. Nicodemus was the best of that kind of 
men. 

Another thing. You must have the free air 
draw through your pile of logs to make a fire. 
That is, you must be disposed, in that relation of 
utter willingness and obedience, to let the divine 
will do what it may with you. What you are here 
for is to give heat and light. Let the air come, 
then, to the wood. Let the wood, being here on 
purpose to blaze, catch the flame and be fanned 
with the wind. But the Pharisee had covered his 
life over as with ashes, with deadening rites, con- 
ventions, observances, and rules, till you could 
hardly get at the real man with a breath of fresh 
air. Did the Pharisee ask, " How can I help my 
poor brothers ? " No : he asked, " How much is 
it the custom to give, or what do the others give?" 



NICODEMUS 33 

Did he ask, " How can I make the most of the 
Sabbath ? " Never! He asked instead, "What 
things must I refrain from doing, so as not to run 
any risks ? " Did he ask, " How shall I come 
directly to the heart of the Eternal ? " He did 
not see the Eternal at all ; but he pored over the 
letter of sacred books as a miserable makeshift 
for seeing the face of God. The Pharisee did 
not think that the log was to burn and give heat 
and light : he did not think that all that life was 
for was to put log upon log and give the flame 
breathing space through them ; but he thought 
that the logs were to be preserved as they were. 
He forgot that the stanchest oak logs, if you bury 
them, will go to decay. 

The seamy side of Pharisaism explains itself. 
It was started as a system of Puritanism ; but no 
system of Puritanism was ever started that did 
not run out at last into sham, self-complacency, 
hypocrisy, moral deadness, spiritual pride. Puri- 
tanism is an attempt to keep yourself intact, in 
some form or other to save your own souls, or, 
if you please, to have moral culture for your- 
selves and the families of people like you. As 
soon, however, as any virtuous set or congrega- 
tion of people withdraw themselves from hearty 



34 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

sympathy with other less virtuous or more igno- 
rant people about them, the dry rot of self-com- 
placency sets in to destroy them. Men were not 
meant to live, even in select communities any 
more than as individuals, apart from the others. 
There was never yet a man or a set of men who 
thought of their own superiority and prided them- 
selves on their virtue or their religion over com- 
mon men, who had heat or light enough to help 
other men to be warm or to see. It is as tho the 
oak log cried out, " See what good wood I am ! " 
It does not warm you to say that. The only 
thing that you ask of the oak log is that it shall 
catch fire ; and when it has caught fire, then and 
not till then will it have kindling power to make 
other wood less firm and solid blaze too. 

The Pharisees, moreover, because they aimed 
to preserve everything as it was, were constitu- 
tionally timid. The system was constituted so 
as to prevent change or movement. " See," they 
said, " we have a high standard. We have at- 
tained it with difficulty. Any shock might tumble 
us to destruction." The Pharisees did not have 
any deep faith in their institutions or their relig- 
ion. Men never have any real faith who are 
afraid that something may hurt the truth, so that 



NICODEMUS 35 

you must handle it carefully, — as tho a man were 
afraid that he would break his limbs if he stirred 
to use them ! 

The Pharisees believed, indeed, in a vague 
way, in the coming kingdom of God ; but they 
did little or nothing to bring it in. They merely 
waited, as tho it had nothing to do with men 
in this world. They were content to keep up 
their petty organization of six thousand families ; 
they were glad to make occasional wealthy pros- 
elytes from their Gentile neighbors ; but as for 
devoting their lives to make this world over into 
the kingdom of God, they did not catch the idea. 
That was what Jesus meant, when he told Nico- 
demus that he was like a man who had yet to be 
born in order to be alive. What was the well- 
to-do Nicodemus doing to make this a better 
world ? Was there any light and gladness where 
Nicodemus walked, such as a son of God ought 
to carry? Did a spirit of joy and health go from 
him to kindle men's souls ? Were his courage 
and generosity contagious to seize other men 
by ? No : he was not awake. He had no spark 
of enthusiasm. His God was far off, not a living 
God here to-day. He touched men with no fine 
uplifting sense of the common humanity. A 



36 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

thousand men as good as Nicodemus would not 
have saved Jerusalem, or banished its poverty, or 
lifted men out of their degrading vices. A dozen 
men, not nearly so good as Nicodemus, who 
nevertheless caught the fire of the Christ's love 
and the Christ's faith, could do more for the re- 
generation of the city than all the Pharisee sect. 
You feel this the moment that Jesus and Nico- 
demus meet. In Jesus' presence Nicodemus is 
a lay figure. It is not the stature of a well 
and real man. It is a sick man, no doubt with 
rugged constitution, who may be made well 
again, but who hardly stands up at all in com- 
parison with Jesus' overflowing health and bound- 
less life. Imagine the new possibilities that 
Jesus set before Nicodemus ! Imagine what 
such a man as that might have risen to be and 
to do ! 

We have spoken with no reference to a mere 
historical retrospect. Nicodemus's story is the 
type of what is to-day in Boston or New York as 
truly as in Jerusalem. We have spoken idly, if 
we have not shown that the Pharisee type is here. 
Neither have we spoken in any disparagement 
of this type at its best. It is of the best moral 
fibre that we know. It takes Christ's name to 



NICODEMUS 37 

swear by. It takes the Christian ritual and cere- 
monies, and fine words to pray in. But no bap- 
tism or holy names or words make it Christian. 
The kindling baptism of "the Spirit of Christ/' a 
vision of the Christ's ideal, the Christ-like love 
that offers all upon the altar of the divine human- 
ity, the breath of the life of God on the soul, 
alone can redeem our modern Pharisaism and fill 
Nicodemus's being with joy and hope. 



III. 

NATHANAEL, THE PURE IN HEART. 

/^ ALILEE, Jesus' home, was the northern 
^-^ division of Palestine, being roughly two 
days' journey from Jerusalem through the inter- 
vening district of Samaria. It was more populous 
and fertile than Judea. In Jesus' time it was full 
of villages. The hillsides were terraced with 
gardens. Considerable towns — Capernaum, Ti- 
berias, and others — were clustered about the 
lake. A varied commerce was carried up to 
Jerusalem and to Egypt, across the desert to 
Damascus, or over the ridge of the Lebanon 
range to the Tyrian coast, where you might have 
seen ships from the Nile, from Rome, from Tar- 
sus, and from Athens. Large towns lay among 
the hills over the lake and the Jordan valley to 
the east. There were strong castles, palaces, 
race-courses, theatres, — the marks of a rich and 
pleasure-loving class. But most of the swarm- 



NATHANAEL 39 

ing population lived meagrely, being heavily taxed 
and oppressed. The Galilean people were a 
mixed race. There were towns of Greek names 
where you would have heard Greek commonly 
spoken. There were people, like Herod's family, 
from the old Edomite or Idumean tribes, the he- 
reditary enemies of the Hebrews. There were 
Syro-Phcenicians from the coast, like the woman 
who came to Jesus to be healed. There were 
also villages where the Hebrews were the leading 
people. Cana, Nathanael's home, was one of 
these villages. No one knows precisely where 
the little village was, — probably within ten miles 
or an afternoon's walk from Nazareth. It was the 
same Cana where Jesus, early in his public life, 
attended a wedding. Indeed, there is an old 
tradition that Nathanael was the bridegroom on 
that occasion. 

The moral condition of Galilee in Jesus' time is 
said to have been bad. The influx of foreigners 
with strange customs and foreign rites had been 
going on at least since Alexander the Great and 
his successors had overrun the country. Con- 
tinual wars had wrought their natural demoraliza- 
tion. An unusual tide of luxury, upborne by the 
wearying toil of the multitudes, now lifted its un- 



40 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

sightly waves. The wonder is how, in such times 
as these, with alluring vice in front and despair 
dogging men's steps behind, any virtue or faith 
survived. The fact is, however, that there seems 
never to have been a higher level of character or 
a more earnest and trustworthy people than you 
find throughout Palestine in this very period. 
The rise of John the Baptist and the ready hear- 
ing that he commanded, the high-minded men, 
such as Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and 
Gamaliel, the friends who almost everywhere 
await Jesus and rally to his side as disciples, the 
devout women who believe in him, glimpses of 
figures of the true-hearted, once seen, but hardly 
again, — the Roman centurion w T ho had built a 
synagogue, the centurion who stood by the cross, 
the dying robber who out of his pain recognized 
Jesus, — these facts bespeak an undercurrent of 
wholesome vitality that no temptations could se- 
duce nor despair and doubt kill ; as when in the 
height of a fever, while the disease rages over the 
body, the skilled physician is aware of the little 
red globules in the blood, which, if they are vital 
enough and if they are not too few, will con- 
quer the fever. Such are the vital germs in a 
party, in an army, in the supporters of every 



NATHANAEL 41 

good cause, often unseen, unthanked, wonder- 
fully provided by God when the time comes, on 
the proper proportion of whom hangs success. 
Would to God it could be given to us to be 
counted by the Great Physician in that class of 
the saving life-germs, the true-hearted and sound, 
whom the fever, smoulder or burn as it may in 
the blood of the nation, cannot subdue ! 

They say that a naturalist, given one or two 
bones, will construct the creature to which they 
belonged, and, if you please, draw a rough pict- 
ure of what he looked like. So out of two or 
three bare facts we can make out what kind of a 
man Nathanael was. We make him out, in the 
first place, to be a simple, ordinary man of the 
great middle class, with a bit of a plot of land 
outside the village, with a few olive-trees and 
grape-vines, and a little house built of mud or 
stones of the field in a narrow street of the town. 
We think of him as hardly older than Jesus, — 
thirty years more or less, — with a wife and little 
children, perhaps, in the tiny home in Cana. 
You would not have seen anything peculiar 
about him, as he drove his oxen in and out of the 
town gate, to distinguish him from other plain 
men. " Merely an average citizen/' you would 



42 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

have said. But it is these average citizens, as 
we call them, of the great middle class that 
nearly everything good comes from. It is pre- 
cisely in this class that you find most abundantly 
these vital germs of the national blood that we 
spoke of. These vital germs of the true-hearted 
do not, probably, flourish so well among the 
well-to-do, or prosperous class. They exist, but 
they are apt to be thinner, less vital, and fewer. 
There is some fatal tendency at work to kill them 
out, as tho they had a harder time to live. In 

7 J 

the great revolution in England, in the days of 
Cromwell, and over and over in the history of 
our country, it was the men of the middle class, 
the mere average citizens, who not only gave the 
muscular force and the sinews of war, but the 
brains, the courage, the persistence, and the virtue, 
— yes, the men of mark to be leaders and states- 
men. Nathanael came of what Nature calls her 
best stock, — of a noble mother, we may be sure ; 
of pure, honest, faithful parentage. Who wants 
anything higher than that ? Nathanael was one 
of the men who went to hear John the Baptist, 
and was doubtless baptized. Not that he spe- 
cially needed to repent and lead a new life, but 
because, like Jesus, if baptism was good for 



NATHAXAEL 43 

others, it was good for him to do whatever he 
wanted others to do. 

It is a puzzle to know what any one committed 
to the old-fashioned doctrine of total depravity 
would make of what Jesus says of Nathanael, — 
" an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile." 
Jesus had barely seen Nathanael. The latter 
did not know Jesus - at all or that he had ever 
seen him. He was suspicious of the Nazareth 
people, who had no great reputation. But Jesus 
instinctively recognized him at once as his kind of 
man. 

Jesus' theory of human nature was quite dif- 
ferent from that of the theologies. He held no 
doctrine whatever that men are all born corrupt, 
as tho a physician were to teach, because he finds 
average men out of health, that men were all born 
with disease in their blood. But Jesus held, as 
the analogy is everywhere else, that some men at 
least are born well, with health in their veins. 
He took Nathanael to be such a man, — a really 
healthy, simple, sound, moral nature ■ in short, one 
of the people whom we think of as naturally 
good. We think of him as growing up in the 
midst of a corrupt population, where a boy saw 
and heard all manner of profane, vulgar, and 



44 JESUS AXD THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

vicious things ; but he had no affinity for such 
things. His natural tastes and sympathies were 
clean, and whatever was not clean did not cleave 
to him. We think of him growing up in the 
midst of a trading community, where a boy saw 
and heard of the tricks of the trade. He heard 
it said that a man could not succeed and be 
honest ; but it was not a temptation for Nathanael 
to go into any business where a man was expected 
to lie. At the same time we do not think of 
Nathanael as any less a thorough boy. We think 
of him as no timid or cow r ardly youth, but out- 
spoken and fearless. It did not occur to him, 
however, that he was doing anything else than 
what was his nature. His wonder would have 
been that bovs or men could bear to soil their 
hands or their souls, when any one was so vastly 
happier to be clean. His wonder would have 
been that men could bear to be stingy, when it 
was so vastly pleasanter to be obliging ; that 
men could be foolish and quarrel instead of 
the easier thing, being good-tempered ; that men 
could hate each other, when so much wretched- 
ness wanted to be borne with and cured. We 
think of Nathanael as a man whom others came 
to for help and advice, perfectly trustworthy, 



NATHANAEL 45 

whom you would have left your treasures with if 
you went on a journey, or appointed in your will 
to be executor and guardian. 

One is reminded of the life of Abraham Lin- 
coin. He bore some of the marks of his rude 
frontier life. Nevertheless, without being as 
faultless as some smaller gems of his type, he 
strikes one as the type of man like Nathanael, 
being essentially a large, generous, well-born, 
wholesome nature. It was no temptation to Lin- 
coln to take more than belonged to him, to ask 
great fees, to think of his salary instead of his 
work. It would have been as unnatural for such 
a man to accept bribes as it is unnatural for the 
mastiff to betray his master. What a confidence 
we have in such a man in those respects in which 
his goodness is simply his nature ! There is no 
danger or strain of temptation in those respects. 
The man cannot be made to take what is not his, 
to tell a lie, to desert his friends, to disappoint 
love, or to give up a cause. It is as tho you had 
your road-bed laid on one of Nature's causeways, 
bedded in the granite rock, beyond the risk of ac- 
cident. Thank God that he makes such men, 
who do not have to struggle to be good, being 
born of a large pattern ! How we admire them ! 



46 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

How beautiful their simple, natural superiority 
seems to us ordinary people, born with mixed 
nature, with doubtful tendencies ; born with sad 
streaks of meanness or timidity, with our sight 
not perfectly true, with baser passions, with in- 
stincts that catch hold of the good, but also with 
lower animal instincts to which evil things cling 
Yes ; and who, when we do what is right, are apt 
to plume ourselves on it, as tho it were anything 
out of the common for a man to do right. And 
then we see one of these Nature's noblemen, sin- 
cere, unaffected, simple-hearted, who does " good 
as the bees make honey," because it is man's 
true nature to do good. We are ashamed that 
we should ever think what we do extraordinary, 
as tho a soldier were to think it extraordinary 
that he does not run away, or an engineer were 
to ask praise for running his engine. 

We said that there is every analogy why Nature 
should produce men born to goodness, for she 
gives us men born to everything else. She gives 
us men born to visions of art, natural geniuses. 
She gives to some a native power of memory. 
She gives born athletes. She gives us born 
mathematicians like Colburn and musicians like 
Beethoven. She raises men up to whom it is 



XATHAXAEL 47 

natural to think and study, to ask questions and 
find answers. Why should she not give us men 
and women born with pure thoughts, with native 
generosity, with instinctive virtue and justice, with 
courage, with large, quick sympathies, who would 
rather serve than be served ? Nature undoubt- 
edly does this. "O heart of man naturally 
Christian ! " says one of the old writers. 

The truth is, this native goodness sets the 
standard of what a man ought to be. Nathanael's 
type is not an exceptional type, but it is the 
normal type, such as every man ought to conform 
to ; as tho, when Nature produced a perfectly 
shaped and healthy human body, she were to say: 
" See ! That is my pattern for all human bodies. 
Model by that. Call that the rule, and call all 
the bodies that fail of the standard misshapen 
or diseased." 

Men see the great athlete go by, and hundreds 
of youths set to work to make their bodies like 
his. They are ashamed of puny limbs and limp 
muscles. Men see the natural scholar, — an Agas- 
siz, for example, — and a whole university is stirred 
to build ordinary minds up to the model of w r hat 
a clear, vitalized, well-equipped mind should be. 
So when men see the normal tvoe of a Nathaniel, 



48 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

— frank, thoroughly open, pure in heart. There 
is the mark of what every man ought to be. You 
cannot bear to be sordid and greedy in such a 
presence. All about Nathanael there is a proc- 
ess of levelling upward, precisely as when boys 
live on the same street with the athlete. 

We see the difference now between Nathanael 
and Nicodemus. We respected Nicodemus, and 
had to pronounce him, as men go, an unusually 
satisfactory man \ but he strikes us as an artificial 
man, not simple and natural like the stalwart vil- 
lager, who, as seems probable, had never even 
joined the Pharisee sect, and most likely found 
their ceremonies and rules irksome. Nicodemus, 
we take it, would have given liberally to the new 
synagogue, but he would have wanted to know 
first what the others gave. He would have gone 
to call on Jesus, preferring to go under cover of 
night ; but Nathanael would have given his heart 
with his money. It would hardly have occurred 
to Nathanael that he was taking a risk, to do what 
was right or to stand by his friend. Nathanael 
did not even know that his life was precious. 

There is a possible sense of discouragement to 
us ordinary people at the sight of pure natural 
goodness, as the ordinary scholar sometimes 



NATHANAEL 49 

despairs at the sight of the men who seem to 
learn without effort. We have certain compensa- 
tions, however. In the first place, the ordinary 
scholar, even if he cannot attain to the ease of 
the other, can succeed in doing everything that the 
other does. As while you would prefer Nature's 
solid road-bed for your track, yet, if you choose, 
you can make a road-bed of your own over the 
bogs or across the ravine. You can make it solid 
above risk of its giving way. There is nothing 
that art, skill, cost, patience, may not do for your 
ordinary nature. You have known men, observ- 
ing the laws, build up weak bodies into splendid 
athletic condition. You have known common 
scholars to outrun the natural scholars. So vou 
have known faulty, seamy natures built up into 
moral vigor and elasticity. The fact is that 
Nature works to help us, and not the other way. 
Nature is always saying to the feeble and imper- 
fect thing, Try to live ; try to grow • move up to 
the standard. Her currents of life wait to flow 
through you as soon as you obey. For the differ- 
ence between one man and another is not so 
much a difference in nature, as tho there were 
different varieties of men, — for there is only one 
common nature, — but the difference is, as it 



50 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

were, in nutrition ; that is, in the vitalizing of the 
nature, one man being more alive than the other. 
" Be more alive, " Nature says, " and I will make 
you strong." 

Besides, the element of self-consciousness is 
not altogether evil when once it is restrained to 
modesty. There is a sense of satisfaction and 
enjoyment in supplementing Nature, as of the 
engineer who enjoys building the somewhat diffi- 
cult bridge more than laying the ordinary road- 
way. Nathanael, who did not feel our tempta- 
tions, had not the joy in resisting that we may 
feel who have honestly built up our trestle-work 
to the point where we stand secure under the 
throb of the passing train ; as the man who has 
always lived on the hills is not so happy as he 
who has lived in the smoky air below, and then 
comes to the hills ; as certainly no one enjoys 
health more than he who has conquered it out of 
the teeth of disease. 

So with moral health, man's only normal state. 
We may well be filled with shame not to possess 
it. We may see the ridiculousness and pitiable- 
ness of harboring pride or superiority over men 
who have less health than we, as tho one conva- 
lescent should look down on others or despise 



NATHANAEL 5 I 

the sick ; but we have a righteous sense of joy, 
thankfulness, and ecstasy that we are at last on 
the highway of health. Even Nathanael, who 
had never needed a physician or knew what sick- 
ness was, might not be so glad ; and he might be 
no more modest than we are, who know what it 
is to have been morally weak, and now catch the 
perfectly delightful hope of being strong and well, 
as the children of God. 



IV. 



PETER AND JOHN THE DISCIPLES. 

JESUS' friends are often thought of as poor 
people. But they did not belong to the 
class to whom you have to give alms. They 
were merely poor as the average citizen of Gali- 
lee was poor. There was leisure for gossip, for 
lessons in the synagogue, for a holiday to hear a 
new prophet on the Jordan. We do not' believe 
that they had to work so hard or so many hours 
a day as the poor work among us. Indeed, pov- 
erty was not so dreadful an enemy in the mild 
climate of Palestine as it is in the vast Christian 
cities of England and America, where cold adds 
its terrors. Among Jesus' disciples were two 
pairs of brothers from Bethsaida, one of the fish- 
ing villages on the shore of the lake of Tiberias. 
Tiberias was a little fresh-water lake, about fifteen 
miles long and six wide, through which flowed 
the Jordan River. Here was the scene of most 



PETER AND JOHN 53 

of Jesus' public work. Here, where the cara- 
van road left the lake at Capernaum, was Jesus' 
favorite resting place. Near by was the beauti- 
ful plain of Gennesaret, with its almost tropical 
growth of fruits. Across the lake to the east were 
bare, precipitous hills, where Jesus found solitude. 
You could climb from the level of the lake to 
the mountains upon the west and north, and per- 
haps see on the blue of the Mediterranean the 
packets that passed from Tyre to Joppa, Caesarea, 
or Alexandria. The fish of the lake of Tibe- 
rias were well-known articles of commerce, being 
salted and exported. Considerable numbers of 
families with their hired men were supported 
by the business. Their fishing boats dotted the 
surface of the lake. 

One of the stones is that Jesus made the 
acquaintance of the young fishermen by the Jor- 
dan, where they had gone to hear John the Bap- 
tist. It would seem by another account that he 
found them at their work, — according to one Gos- 
pel, fishing; by another, cleaning their nets by the 
sea. Luke says that Jesus, being pressed by 
the crowd, asked permission of Simon to use his 
boat from which to speak the better to the people 
thronging the shore. Of Jesus' twelve apostles, 



54 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

strangely little is known ; in the case of Simon the 
Cananean, Thaddeus, and Bartholomew, hardly 
more than the bare mention of the name. The 
two pairs of brothers, James and John, Peter and 
Andrew, stand closest to Jesus, tho neither James 
nor Andrew has any well-defined identity apart 
from the better known brothers, John and Peter. 
These two appear almost inseparable from Jesus. 
He is more affectionately attached to them than 
the others. He takes them and James into his 
privacy, as in the garden of Gethsemane. Know- 
ing them, you know what the best of the disciples 
were. 

It was not uncommon in Judea for a teacher to 
gather about himself a little company of attached 
followers. This had been the case with John 
the Baptist, whose devoted friends followed him 
to the fortress where he gave up his life. The 
claims of personal friendship and discipleship 
overrode even the claims of the family, much 
more the interests of a man's business. 

Peter, and it would seem John also, were young 
married men, and were partners in the fishery. 
They gave up their trade and left their homes to 
follow Jesus. To understand how Jesus could 
have found men willing for his sake to relinquish 



PETER AND JOHN S5 

everything, one must remember the extraordinary 
expectations with which people's minds were filled. 
The end of the old world was drawing near. The 
pain, the poverty, the misfortune, the national 
disgrace, the wicked oppression, would cease. 
There would be a new king. Justice would at 
last be done. If there was as much as a chance 
that these startling events were at hand, what was 
the fishing business by the lake that it should 
bind a man down to turn his life into shekels 
when soon life and death would be at issue ? The 
disciples could hardly have made up their minds 
at once that Jesus, a Nazareth man, was the 
Prince whom people looked for; but there was 
that in Jesus' bearing and manner of teaching — 
he was so sincere, disinterested, and authoritative 
— that when he said, "Come," it seemed wrong 
not to come. Do you not know that there are 
men with a quality of power, insight, and dignity 
that it is hard to refuse ? Do they ask help, we 
give it to them. Do they ask money, we are 
stirred to contribute. Do they ask people's lives, 
as such men did ask lives in the great Civil War, 
men are moved to volunteer. So with Jesus' 
royal personality, whom humble men instinctively 
obeyed, from which the rich young ruler, when 
he had refused, turned away sorrowful. 



$6 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

We do not understand that we have in Peter and 
John any exceptional quality of men, that they so 
readily became Jesus' disciples. On the contrary, 
all that we find about the twelve convinces us 
that they stand as types of average men of de- 
cidedly common moral character. They were dull 
men, extremely slow to comprehend their Master's 
teaching, wanting to have even parables ex- 
plained. They were superficial, with an eye for 
outward success, numbers, crowds, popularity. 
They were narrow and ungenerous. They did 
not like it that some one not of their own number 
should be healing in Jesus' name. They would 
have liked to call fire down on a Samaritan vil- 
lage that did not receive them. They were 
jealous of each other and quarrelsome. James 
and John appear scheming to secure the prom- 
ise of the prime minister's place in the new king- 
dom. What shall we get, says Peter, to pay 
us for leaving all? It is the same men who 
haggled over the price of their fish at the lake, 
envious if another boat had better luck. What- 
ever you make of the story of Peter trying to 
walk on the sea, it stands as a reminiscence of 
the conceit of a small, self-confident nature. 
Another familiar story exhibits something in 



PETER AND JOHN S7 

Peter of a spirit of worlclliness more offensive 
and greedy, we suspect, than the mere words 
convey, that provokes Jesus to turn on him and 
say, "Get thee behind me, Satan." People often 
speak of Thomas as the type of the sceptic, but 
it is not the truth-loving sceptic, the earnest in- 
quirer : it is only the common, stupid sceptic, 
who doubts as easily as he believes. One of the 
twelve was Judas, — a man, we suspect, money- 
loving, weak, and over-shrewd rather than bad. 
Remembering his piteous remorse and bitter 
death, we cannot think of him as much worse 
by nature than the eleven, who to a man ran 
away in the hour of their Master's distress, as the 
best of them could not keep awake through the 
time of his anguish ; and then, in the trial, Peter, 
the boaster, who had said that he would never 
desert his Lord, steals in to look on, and before 
Jesus' face denies that he knew him, while a few 
hours later it is left to Joseph and Nicodemus 
and a few women to care for the Master's body. 
To the date of the crucifixion there is next to 
nothing told of these disciples, except the fact 
that they were disciples, to stir our admiration or 
respect. There is not one of them that shows 
the moral fibre of Nicodemus. There is not a 



58 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

particle of evidence that there is a Nathanael 
among them. If Peter and John had had honor 
and lands and position, think you, were they the 
men to sacrifice all for Jesus ? They do not im- 
press us so. It was comparatively easy and safe 
to follow Jesus, or they would not have done it. 

It is not, of course, strange that Jesus should 
have loved poor and humble men, for there are 
poor men — Nathanael, for example — who are 
extraordinary in character; but these men were 
ordinary in character, cowardly, untruthful, jeal- 
ous, selfish, narrow-minded, the very kind of men 
whom you would suppose Jesus would find it im- 
possible to bear and associate with. Any one of 
our American congregations ought, you say, to 
produce in a moment twelve better men to make 
apostles out of, that could be depended on, of 
more insight and moral elevation, of large chiv- 
alry, who would have died with Jesus. And yet 
Jesus loved these ordinary men. What did he 
find in them to love, or to think that he could 
make into the quality of apostles? It is as tho 
to the unpractised eye there were shown speci- 
mens of gold-bearing earth or rock. The un- 
practised eye, expecting to see nuggets of pure 
gold, is disappointed at this mere ordinary-look- 



PETER AND JOHN 59 

ing earth or rock. But the miner knows its value. 
" See," he says, " there are grains of gold in that 
earth, there are veins in the rock. It is extremely 
precious," the practised miner says. His imagi- 
nation leaps forward and sees the great bars of 
pure gold that by and by, after the washing and 
the crucible, will be made out of this very or- 
dinary seeming earth. So with this ordinary 
human nature. Looked at roughly, you do not 
see anything noble in it. The world scoffs at it. 
We do not want to see this common sand. 
"Give us nuggets and bars and the clear-cut 
coin from the mint," says the voice of the 
world. " Nay," says the Christ, " give us this 
ordinary human nature, with the gleam of the 
gold of God that shines in it. What does it 
matter that it has dross and alloy, since the pre- 
cious value is in it besides ? " 

Jesus' teaching is never that human nature is 
ruined and worthless ; on the contrary, human 
nature is lovable. Jesus is always spying out 
something genuine in men. Making allowances 
for bad defects and a good deal of selfishness, 
Jesus knew that the disciples had a spirit of 
honest loyalty. Their nature was mixed; but it 
was not altogether for themselves that these men 



60 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

had left their business and homes, and risked 
all to follow him. Stupid as they were in ap- 
preciating their Master, they believed in him 
and loved him. They really meant it when they 
promised to die with him. Their impulses and 
feelings, tho so far only emotional, at times rose 
to the level of heroism. These rude men had 
also a glimmering sense of ideals. It was be- 
cause Jesus' character towered above them that 
they reverenced him. They were men of patri- 
otic mould, who caught visions of the new Israel 
that w r as to be. Without clear insight of religion, 
they had religious aspirations. Above all, they 
had a sense of duty. They meant to do right. 
You could appeal not in vain to their consciences. 
You could even rebuke them, and they would 
bear it, knowing that it was for their good. They 
had the excellent quality of persistence, or hold- 
ing out. They had been tested in all these re- 
spects. Other men had also enrolled themselves 
as Jesus' disciples, and had become tired or dis- 
couraged, and had given him up ; but the twelve 
had held on. No mere adventurers or time- 
servers or self-seekers would have stayed with 
Jesus. The disciples' qualities of faithfulness, 
loyalty to a leader, personal affection, religious 



PETER AND JOHN 01 

aspiration, patriotism, conscience, obedience to 
ideals, — you are almost tempted to call these 
rare qualities. In the form of the pure, refined 
nugget of gold they are rare ; but mixed in the 
dross and alloy they are very frequent, being 
qualities of average human nature. They are 
the qualities of the great middle class, — we mean 
middle class not in means, but in morals, who are 
neither rich nor poor in moral character. Alto- 
gether below them are the poor, the only really 
poor in this world, in whom these average qualities, 
the gleams of the divine gold, are scant and thin, 
lost in the bulk of the dross. God pity the 
morally poor, the sad unfortunates who seem not 
to have it in them to be faithful, in whom stir no 
aspirations for holy and beautiful things, who 
do not even admire the Christ when they see him ! 
These only are poor. Be sure God does pity 
them. Be sure, wherever one grain of the true 
gold is hidden, there is love enough in the uni- 
verse to redeem it. This divine gold has a magic 
affinity to find its like and to gather every particle 
to itself. 

We liken Jesus to a soldier who has mustered 
in a company of recruits. It is not necessary that 
these be picked men, ready to make officers of ; 



62 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

it is not necessary that they should have had 
experience in drilling or in the field, or that they 
should be stronger or braver than common. All 
that is necessary is that they shall be average 
men, of ordinary qualities of strength, endurance, 
intelligence, courage, and morals. They must not 
have the average lowered by shirks and bounty- 
jumpers. The trained soldier who enlisted these 
men foresees that they will be awkward, that they 
will be homesick and weary and sometimes wish 
that they had not come, that they are liable to 
panic and rout. But he also foreknows, so be 
he has average material, that he will weld these 
men into thorough soldiers, hardy, fearless, and 
patient, who will march to the cannon's mouth at a 
word, who will die together, if need be, like Wash- 
ington's veterans at Valley Forge. So Jesus took 
the average human nature such as he could get. 
If he could not do his work with such stuff as 
common men are made of, if his principles would 
not serve average human nature, if his truths 
were only good for saints and philosophers, they 
were not good for this world at all. " Give me 
average men," Jesus said, " and I will make my 
invincible soldiers before whom the kingdom of 
evil will fall." 



PETER AND JOHN 63 

There is one quality which makes disciples 
which we have so far omitted. It is docility, or 
willingness. Jesus could not have done any- 
thing without it. As we have seen, there was 
moral material to be had considerably better 
than Jesus found in his disciples ; precisely as, 
when a recruiting agent went into a town in the 
time of the war, there would be the material for 
soldiers left in the town after he had gone away 
better than much which he took. There would 
be men of splendid natural capacity, who did not 
sympathize with the war or who were too busy 
with their private affairs. What distinguishes the 
recruits is that they have enlisted, whereas perhaps 
better men stay at home. 1 They have committed 
themselves to obey orders and do a soldier's 
work. So Jesus' disciples, being ordinary men in 
other respects, were different from other ordinary 
men or even better men by nature, in that they 
had committed themselves, while they were with 
Jesus, to be taught and to obey. 

This is where the great mistake is made about 
what it is to be a Christian. There is nowhere 
a hint that a Christian pretends to be better than 
other men. He often is not naturally so good. 
Much less is there a hint that he professes to be 



64 JESUS AXD THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

perfect. He is simply an enlisted man. He is 
pledged to a certain ideal of life, to be a learner. 
Show him what the Christ bids, he will at least 
move toward doing it. Show him what the will 
of God is, and he will try to accept it. Show 
him what the spirit of the Christ is, it is what he 
wants to exhibit. Duty says, " Storm the fort " : 
the enlisted man will try, tho he may lay down his 
life in the breach outside ; or, if sudden panic 
seizes him, he may be depended on, at the 
voice of his captain, to rally to the colors again. 
This definition of Christianity is the same essen- 
tially, whether we take the modern and even 
radical interpretation or the old-fashioned inter- 
pretation. Whatever is right, the Christian is 
pledged to try to do it. What is true, the Chris- 
tian is pledged to try honestly to find out. What 
ought to be, the Christian is enlisted to make 
that real. 

It is easy to see why Jesus made so much of 
discipleship. The need in the war was soldiers, 
enlisted men. It was idle merely to say that you 
sympathized with the national cause while you 
were spending your time in making money for 
yourself. It was idle to show that you had the 
courage and physique for a soldier, unless some- 



PETER AND JOHN 65 

how you co-operated to help the soldier's cause. 
Indeed, there is a certain deterioration in quali- 
ties, however excellent, unless they are put out to 
discipline. " I have an ear for music and a natu- 
ral voice," some one says, "and I will not take a 
master." It is almost certain that that fine natu- 
ral voice goes to waste or ruin. " I have not 
much voice," some one else modestly says, "but 
I will take the best master there is. I will bear 
his criticism. I will practise his rules." Pres- 
ently, this common voice grows clear and sweet 
and strong. For Nature is against all self-com- 
placency : Nature is always pushing men to take 
masters and get discipline, — that is, discipleship. 
Nature urges us all to obey rules. " Obey rules, 
or you perish," she says. Nature is always organ- 
izing men to work together, to join the school or 
university, to enlist and co-operate, to obey orders. 
The man who enlisted rose from the ranks 
and came home a hero. The man who stayed at 
home to take care of himself died, and no one 
cared for his loss. So with the disciples. The 
noble young man in the story would not enlist, 
and no one ever hears of him again. But Peter 
and the rest, rustics and fishermen, rose from the 
ranks to apostleship, martyrdom, and immortality. 



66 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

The same happens daily. The youth of to-day 
vows the eternal old vow of the Christ : " Show 
me the right, and, so help me God, I will do it." 
So all the world's heroes come. Failing that vow, 
men's lives run out into ignominy. 

One thing more. We have left a whole half of 
the disciples' lives untouched. Something hap- 
pened to them after a while, — except to poor 
Judas, who fell out and lost himself. The schol- 
ars who plodded over the dusty routine came at 
last to a point where they caught the secret of the 
Master. They could do what he did. They had 
got out of the fogs about the base of the moun- 
tain ; and, as the whole wonderful prospect that 
he had told them of burst upon them, they became 
new men and masters, too. The very men who 
had run away from the Roman spears, raised to a 
new power, braved crucifixion themselves. Their 
selfishness, purged away, left the sterling gold of 
love. Their faith became invincible. So much 
for what Jesus could do with average men. "It 
is not essential," Jesus said, " to purchase choice 
oak to build the fire." The world can be warmed 
and lighted without the superior quality of Nico- 
demus and the Pharisee sect. Bring on mere 
average wood and pile it on the hearth. That 



PETER AND JOHN 6j 

was discipleship ; namely, the willingness to give 
one's self up for the world's heat and light. But, 
while the superior oak piled by itself neither 
warmed nor lighted a soul, this mere average 
wood, — yes, with crooked sticks and inferior 
fibre, that yet gave itself to the service of the 
great household, — catching at last the holy flame 
of Christ, blazed and burned and shone, and the 
world thanked God and blessed it till the cold 
oak itself began to catch the heat. 



V. 



JESUS, THE MASTER. 

JESUS' town of Nazareth was small and un- 
important. It is not mentioned in the Old 
Testament ; and, except for the Gospels, its name 
would never have been preserved. It was about 
twenty miles from the Lake of Tiberias on the east 
and the Mediterranean on the west. Rounded 
limestone hills, four or five hundred feet high, rise 
above the valley where the town lies. From one 
of these hills you can see the Mediterranean and 
Mount Carmel and the great plain of Galilee, — 
the scene of many a battle, — the Samaritan hills 
beyond, and Mount Hermon, always snow-cov- 
ered, more than fifty miles to the north. Jeru- 
salem lay beyond the Samaritan country about 
seventy miles, or three days' journey. The coasts 
of Tyre and Sidon under the shadow of Mount 
Lebanon were less than three days' journey in 
the opposite direction. Between these limits, 



JESUS 69 

north and south about the length of Massachu- 
setts, and east and west from the Mediterranean 
to the country across the Jordan, about the width 
of Massachusetts, was comprised probably all that 
Jesus ever saw of the world we live in. Entering 
the gate of Nazareth, you would have seen narrow 
streets, with low houses, each built around a 
court-yard where the domestic animals could be 
driven at night or in war. The plain building of 
the synagogue would have perhaps been the 
most conspicuous object. The inhabitants of the 
town were small farmers and tradespeople. They 
spoke in the somewhat harsh Galilean dialect, by 
which a citizen of Jerusalem would have detected 
a native of the country. The Nazareth people 
had no reputation which would have led any one 
to expect a rabbi or prophet among them. On the 
contrary, they appear in the narrative of the Gos- 
pels to have been specially narrow-minded and 
fanatical. It was at Nazareth, Jesus' home, where 
they would have taken his life. In this obscure 
Jewish village, Jesus grew up, the eldest son, as 
it appears, of a considerable family, to the un- 
eventful life of a carpenter. 

Let us see the reading and education which he 
had. Besides the books that make the Old Testa- 



JO JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

merit and the Apocrypha, one might have found 
in Nazareth the so-called v Book of Enoch/' the 
"Psalms of Solomon," and a few other manu- 
scripts, such as fed the popular Messianic expec- 
tations. Of nearly all other books, especially of 
Greek or Latin literature, Jesus would have known 
nothing. Of the science of nature, he gleaned 
only what the watchful observer discovered for 
himself of the flight of the sparrow or the lilies of 
the valley. Of the life of the great, of the 
world's politics, of the vast power beyond the sea 
in Italy, whose legions passed by to fight the 
Parthians on the frontier, of her famous svstem 
of laws, this young Galilean could have had only 
the most meagre intelligence. 

Jesus lived at Nazareth, it would seem, till he 
was thirty years old. People thought of him as 
the carpenter or the carpenter's son. So humble 
had his life been up to this time that Nathanael, 
a citizen of Cana, only two hours' walk from 
Nazareth, seems not to have heard of him. What 
had he been doing these thirty years ? What 
had he been silently thinking about ? What mar- 
vellous secret had he caught, that he should sud- 
denly appear with the strange figure of John the 
Baptist at the Jordan, — that, when John's life 



JESUS 71 

was quenched, Jesus should take his place, with 
John's boldness, but with a new and original ease, 
dignity, and authoritativeness ? It is not certain 
that Jesus' public life lasted more than a year. 
Suppose it was three years. It ended in ignominy ; 
and yet Jesus' career marks an epoch in the 
history of the world. Wherein does this unique- 
ness of Jesus consist ? What had he to contrib- 
ute that the world needed or that other men did 
not have ? 

Was he unique in the wonderful things which 
he did, in certain supernatural powers of which 
the world has made great account ? But just such 
wonderful things are told of others. Substan- 
tially, everything that the world has accounted 
marvellous in the story of Jesus is to be found in 
the stories of Elijah and Elisha, even to the raising 
of the dead ; but the world is hardly interested in 
Elijah and Elisha. In fact, people do not believe 
in Jesus to-day as they once did, because he is 
reported to have worked miracles; but, when they 
believe the miracles, it is because they first believe 
in Jesus. Was Jesus unique, then, in the new 
truths which he brought ? We can hardly find 
a single teaching of Jesus that has not its coun- 
terpart in the words of earlier men. His most 



72 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

beautiful law, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself," he only quotes. The belief in immor- 
tality, associated with him, was perhaps as general 
among the Jews of Jesus' time as it is to-day. 

The storv also was of other sinless men, — 
Enoch, for example. There had been blameless 
men, friends of God and prophets, in whom the 
world has seen no fault. Jesus himself had 
praised Nathanael as such a blameless man. 
Neither did Jesus seem directly to accomplish 
anything. The marvel is to account for such re- 
sults as we see to-day in his name, with only a 
year or two of the preaching of one who did not 
strive nor lift up his voice in the streets. Yet we 
all feel the fact of Jesus' uniqueness. When we 
praised the noble and austere character of John 
the Baptist, we felt a lack in him as soon as Jesus 
appeared. When we were about to praise Nico- 
demus, the picked man of the Puritan or Pharisee 
sect, the appearance of Jesus dwarfed Nicodemus. 
When we found Nathanael, a man of pure natural 
goodness, there was that in Jesus which marked 
him as a distinctly higher type. 

It is as well to acknowledge that there are some 
things which you cannot explain. What was it in 
Jenny Lind's voice that entranced her generation? 



jesus 73 

It was a human voice, not an angel's. She sang 
the same old notes that others had sung. She 
invented nothing ; but her name is immortal in 
the annals of song. Girls to-day live in the hope 
of doing what Jenny Lind did. The fact is, God's 
world is full of such surprises. Flavors, fra- 
grances, harmonies, or proportions, a beautiful 
face, a sweet voice, the works of genius, the com- 
mon daily fact of love, the aspirations of faith, 
man's hope of immortality, — all touch upon mys- 
tery that no science can more than name. So of 
Jesus' life. 

Jesus' characteristic ideas are perfectly familiar. 
He held, first of all, that God was the most real 
fact in the universe. No one was so near as God. 
His presence simply wrapped you around. Your 
spirit only had life through the breathing of the 
spirit of God revealed, in every sky and star. Of 
power, truth, or thought, you are only a channel 
or vehicle to carry and transmit. The one fact 
of God explains and unifies everything. Man has 
nothing that belongs to him exclusively. His life 
is simply to do whatever the divine will bids. 
According to Jesus, the law that bound all was 
love. Love was the highest thing. Love was the 
life of the great Father of all, and, by conse- 



74 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

quence, of his children. Trust the dictates of 
love, then, wherever it led you. Follow it, though 
it bade sacrifice and martyrdom. Giving up all 
for love's sake, losing life if you must, yet keeping 
love, you kept the life of God. 

There are certain striking and memorable 
passages that always convey these ideas, — the 
beatitudes, for example, and especially the words : 
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God " ; " Love your enemies " ; " For he 
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good " j " It is more blessed to give than to 
receive " ; "God is a Spirit, and they that worship 
him must worship him in spirit and in truth." 
Jesus found men everywhere selfish ; that is, 
seeking first to save their own lives. He saw 
that the secret of life was the opposite. For this 
was a universe in which God reigned. He, then, 
who would give his life to serve God — i.e., to 
speak the truths and do the deeds of God — 
should find life ; precisely as each little cell of 
the vine finds its own life by passing onward the 
life of the vine, not by stopping and clogging 
its flow. What makes the whole vine grow will 
make every branch. grow. First, then, serve the 
life of the whole, and the whole will take care of 



jesus 75 

you, its parts. Thus Jesus said, speaking out 
of his experience, " My meat is to do the will of 
him that sent me." 

These ideas traverse the New Testament; but 
they are all found in the Old Testament, not to 
speak of other scriptures. Characteristic as they 
w r ere of Jesus, he had not altogether cleared them 
(as no man of his age could have cleared them) 
of the prevailing superstitions of the time, in 
which every Jewish child was brought up. Nev- 
ertheless, Jesus did what others had only partially 
done or talked of doing. He put his ideas into 
practice, and did. not simply contemplate them, 
like the Pharisees. He lived as though the good 
God was real. He did not say that matter was 
evil, like the Essenes; but he consistently enjoyed 
God's beautiful world. He held his life as not 
his own. He treated men as brethren, loved them 
as himself, gave himself utterly to the service of 
the great brotherhood. What God showed as 
true, he spoke without fear. What God showed 
to be right, he actually did. He tried to bring 
about the ideal kingdom of peace which others 
had dreamed of. He said to men, — if not in 
so many words, yet substantially, — " Let us join 
hands together, and make the good times real." 



j6 JESUS AXD THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

All this was new. The prophets and John the 
Baptist had been as fearless as Jesus, perhaps as 
obedient ; but they had spoken of God's world as 
yet to come. Jesus said that God's world was 
here already. It was a new attitude, — easv, un- 
constrained, and gladsome. There had been in 
all ages quiet instances of peace-loving, just, 
and guileless souls like Nathanael ; but it had 
not occurred to them to do anything more than 
to live their pure lives. The temptation was 
to get away from the sinners ; but Jesus held 
that his life belonged to the sinners. He lived 
for the sake of bringing about a change in the 
social order, so that men should cease to be sin- 
ners. That was what he made disciples for. 
There was nothing morbid, ascetic, or gloomy in 
this man, with whom God was now present, who 
lived above the fear of death, who stood for the 
coming age of gold. 

In the famous battle above the clouds at Chat- 
tanooga, while men fought uncertainly in the mist 
below, the advance guard of the attacking force 
climbed high enough to seize the higher lines in 
the enemy's rear. The battle was not yet fin- 
ished. The advance guard would yet have to 
lay down their lives ; but, if that higher point 



jesus 77 

were won, the cause was assured. So with Jesus' 
conquest of evil. Down in the mists below, the 
prophets and ascetics had fought a doubtful bat- 
tle with evil on its own level. But Jesus had 
gained a vantage-ground, from which the nature 
of the conflict was altered. Let men once seize 
this elevation, and there would hardly need to be 
any more waste of life. One man here was bet- 
ter than a hundred fighting on the level below. 
What could not twelve, or a company of true men, 
do from this higher vantage-ground, where already 
the very sight of the sacred flag of brotherly love 
put the evil forces to flight ? 

Jesus' method or secret has become a sort of 
proverb. It is not enough that you have in a 
family, a community, a parliament, average, well- 
intentioned men like Peter and John. They will 
be voted down, or persuaded to evil, or craftily 
bought. It is not enough that you have quiet, 
patient men like Nathanael, here and there one, 
who cannot be persuaded or purchased. It is not 
enough that you have the stern voice of a prophet 
denouncing evil. But give us one man of utter 
disinterestedness, who pities the guilty while he 
loves the oppressed, — committed body and soul 
to serve the whole family or the whole nation, — 



j8 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

who treats everything from the point of view 
of love, and such a man becomes an invincible 
leader. 

Another thing. Men had been used to go by 
laws and rules, as they mostly go now. You 
could hold on to your technical private rights. 
You could be ungenerous ; you could act in dis- 
trust toward your neighbor; you could cut off 
your disobedient child with a shilling ; you could 
be hard, unforgiving, and proud ; you could in- 
sist upon the exact terms of the contract. Jesus 
swept all these excuses away, when he asked of 
each and all, " How about your spirit 1" " Was 
your act or word in the right spirit ? " It is a 
new standard when any one recognizes this ideal 
of the right spirit. How our egotism wriggles 
and twists to get away from the kindly hold of 
that sort of conviction ! " But," our egotism says, 
"it was the law, and I ought to have my rights, 
and the other had injured me"; or "I only did 
as others." And then we lift up our eyes and 
catch the wonderful standard, so subtle and yet 
so imperative, — the spirit of Christ. 

The steel needle, so far as it is only of steel, 
will not point true to the north. It will point 
wherever you lay it down. Magnetize the steel, 



jesus 79 

if you want it to point to the north. So men's 
lives, so far only as they are of good material, 
will not necessarily hold true to the life of God. 
But Jesus' life was magnetized and possessed. 
The life and forces of God played through it. It 
gave itself utterly to their motion. Whither the 
spirit pointed, there it went. It is not merely 
the goodness of the excellent material that the 
world wants. It wants vitalized goodness. It 
wants men like Jesus alive and awake in every 
city, village, and household. It wants not merely 
kindly-intentioned people, but people magnetized 
to a purpose, vitalized with love, committed to 
the Christ's kind of life. 

Here is the secret of all unity among men. 
Vitalize men with the spirit of Christ, and such 
men will think and act together. The magne- 
tized material points the same way. What does 
the voice of God bid us do for the love of man ? 
Christ's way is the way that every soul asking 
this question instinctively takes. In the hour 
that I ask this question, I join hands with the 
true and noble of all lands and ages. In the 
hour that we ask this question together, we are 
as one man in our sympathy, we have a common 
worship. 



80 JESUS AND THE MEN ABOUT HIM 

We wondered how Jesus without any education, 
such as men count education, could have printed 
his name on the most civilized nations forever. 
One of his marvellous sentences carries his se- 
cret. "If thine eye be single,"' he says, "thy 
whole body shall be full of light." It is the 
quality of learning, the seeing from the level of 
the hilltop, that makes any one wise. To the 
single eye of love, mysteries and enigmas are dis- 
closed, the lines of human strife are straightened, 
the simple conditions of right and wrong are 
made clear. Did you never try to answer your 
baffling questions with this quality of sight ? Did 
you never cease to ask, What is expedient? or 
What is wise ? and ask instead, What does broth- 
erly love bid ? or, How would I like to be served ? 

Finally, what gives our ordinary lives inspira- 
tion and comfort ? Jesus' vitalized goodness, we 
answer, goes by contagion, as the flame kindles 
in the dry fuel. Like the old story of the beacon- 
fires that blazed from burning Troy, from head- 
land to headland about the zEgean Sea carrying 
good tidings to ten thousand homes, so the fire 
of the Christ's light plays and kindles from cen- 
tury to century through history till it bursts out 
in a million homes. When do we see one soul 



JESUS 81 

caught by this flame, when does one thor- 
oughly pure and vitalized life touch us with its 
warmth, when do we ever draw together and 
take for an hour the motion of the spirit of God 
that leaps to seize us, that we do not have re- 
vealed what it would be to give our lives wholly 
up, Christ-fashion, to the beautiful will of God? 
For the type of Jesus is the coming type of the 
true man everywhere, — a living, vitalized man, a 
just, friendly, brotherly man, of wide, quick sym- 
pathies, of incandescent faith and hope. Take 
our lives then, Spirit of the living God, make 
them thine own ! Show us what is Christ-like, 
we will try to do it. Show us the visions of the 
kingdom of God, we will live to make them 
real. We commit ourselves to thee, to be taught 
and to obey. 



In the love of truth and in the spirit of Jesus 
Christ, we join for the worship of God and the ser- 
vice of man. 

We believe in one God, the Father eternal, whose 
righteousness, wisdom, and love rule the worlds. 

We believe in the holy spirit of cheerfulness, 
charity, and peace, which we would win and maintain. 

We believe in truthfulness, honesty of conduct in- 
tegrity of character, wise and generous giving, purity 
of thought and life. 

We believe that we owe our lives to the service of 
our kindred, our neighbors, the state, and mankind. 

We believe that obedience to duty is the way of 
life, and no one can do wrong and not suffer harm. 

We believe that no real harm can befall the right- 
eous in life or death. 

We believe in the imitation of Jesus Christ, and all 
God's heroes, teachers, martyrs, saints, and bene- 
factors. 

We hold to the brotherhood of those who love and 
serve man, and we hope for the Life Everlasting. 



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